Showing events on this day in years past that shaped history... just, not our history.

Friday, January 25, 2013

March 24, 1603 - Anne Stanley Succeeds Elizabeth I

After witnessing the deaths of many
of her friends, Elizabeth I of England herself fell ill with
"melancholy" and passed away. She had ruled England for over
forty years, steering it through rough eras of religious war between
Protestants and Catholics and resisting the Spanish Armada. Elizabeth had
also never married, meaning that she had no issue to rule after her. Her
secretary of state and Lord Privy Seal, Robert Cecil, who himself had inherited
his title from his father, had set to work on the problem of succession early
as he came into office in the 1590s in coded negotiations with a potential
heir, King James VII of Scotland.

Elizabeth's first cousin twice
removed, James had proven himself loyal to England during the Spanish
Armada. In addition, he was a knowledgeable and strong monarch, able to
deal with opposition while continuing many of his own projects, such as the
colonization of Outer Hebrides Islands by adventurers and conducting witch
hunts to purify Scotland of evil. Both were firm executive moves
following action of the Scottish Parliament in demanding title-deeds from the
Highlanders (many of whom failed to prove ownership of their lands and were
subsequently "civilized") and the Witchcraft Act of 1563 establishing
capital punishment for the crime. He proved himself a scholar, writing
the pamphlet Daemonologie on the topic of witch hunting in 1597.

Other pamphlets, however, began to
raise suspicion in Cecil. In 1598, James published True Law of Free
Monarchies, followed by Basilikon Doron ("The Royal Gift")
the next year. Both were treatises on the divine right of rulers and
reflected James' leanings toward absolutism. In comparison, Elizabeth
said in her first speech as monarch at Hatfield House in 1558, "I mean to
direct all my actions by good advice and counsel." James took a very
different stance on government and had already begun conflicts over money with
the Scottish Parliament. Cecil knew that contributing to James'
coronation in England would be a great boon to is personal career, but haunting
visions of a civil war, perhaps even rivaling that of the Barons' Wars, forced
him to reconsider his choice. Finally he became determined against James
Stuart. Cecil sabotaged him, giving sly bad advice for the tone of the
king's letters to Elizabeth. By the time of Elizabeth's death, James had
become widely unpopular in court.

Cecil faced the problem of whom to
crown. According to the will of Henry VIII, the line passed next to the
granddaughters of Mary Tudor, the Greys; Jane Grey had actually ruled for nine
days as queen before her execution, Catherine Grey had married secretly and
been involved in a huge scandal with Edward Seymour, 1st Earl of Hertford, ending
with their sons being deemed illegitimate, and Mary Grey had died without
children. Attempting to crown Catherine's son Edward Seymor, Viscount
Beauchamp, would be a political nightmare, and so Cecil turned to the next in
line through the will, twenty-two-year-old Anne Stanley.

The Third Succession Act of
Parliament in 1543 affirmed Anne, and Cecil began stirring its significance
among the court and in Parliament. Elizabeth refused to name an heir
(judging it to be political idiocy), and so upon her death, Anne Stanley was
suddenly approached to be queen. The girl was quietly shocked, as
Elizabeth had been decades before, and Cecil felt he had made the right
decision, setting out to recreate Elizabeth upon the throne. Anne was
unmarried and living at the estate of her brother, 6th Earl of Derby, following
her father's death. She seemed perfect clay in which to mold the will of
rule by council.

James became furious and staged an
invasion of England to claim his throne. Cecil spun the event into a
defense of the nation, calling all the more praise for Anne, who sat meekly
upon the throne while Parliament raised an army to protect her. After two
years at war, James ran out of money and was refused more by the Scottish
Parliament. Scotland soon descended into a civil war of its own as James
worked to force absolute rule. Scotland overthrew the king and replaced
him with James' young son, Henry Frederick, who ruled obediently through
council.

Anne continued her rule quietly,
being known primarily as a great patron of the arts through the advice of her
brother. The biggest political question of the day was whom she would
marry, a question that Cecil increasingly answered with, "It stands to be
seen, if at all." No one in Europe seemed to be eligible as Catholic
nobles were out of the question (though Anne herself had Catholic leanings) and
the males of the Continent seemed to be too old, too young, or already married,
such as Sigismund III Vasa of Poland-Lithuania and Gustav II Adolf of
Sweden. Cecil counseled Anne to maintain her virginity as a political
tool until his death in 1612.

Anne finally married in 1623, to
Francis Cottington, an experienced ambassador and Parliamentarian who also had
Catholic leanings. The couple was widely popular among Protestants and
Catholics alike, healing much of the religious tension in the country while the
rest of Europe descended into the bloody Thirty Years War. England
continued expanding its colonial empire, much at the cost of the Dutch and the
Scots, against whom England often fought at sea alongside Spain.

Colonial expansion fascinated
Europe for the next two centuries, first in the Americas, then the Orient, and
finally the interior of Africa. England's model of Parliamentary rule
with an executive monarch proved effectual, expanding its representation to
include colonies after a tax revolt in the Americas. England gained the
world's largest empire by the 1800s but would eventually fade as nationalism
and independence rose up among the many peoples ruled from London.

--

In reality, Robert Cecil chose
James Stuart. While James and the Parliament struggled, a complete break occurred
under James' heir Charles I in the First and Second Civil Wars. The Stuarts
were restored in 1660 but ousted again in the Glorious Revolution of
1688. Anne Stanley lived a troubled life; she and her son brought her
second husband Sir Mervyn Tuchet, 2nd Earl of Castlehaven, to trial on
accusations of rape and sodomy, culminating in his beheading in 1631 and the
establishment of the right of an injured wife to testify.